


What Could Be a Better Gift

by samyazaz



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't exactly do Christmas normally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Could Be a Better Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [C-chan (1001paperboxes)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001paperboxes/gifts).



They don't exactly do Christmas normally. Friends come over mid-December and give their house confused looks when they a barren tree and no Christmas decorations to speak of. They've been called grinches a time or two, from acquaintances who don't know them better, but it's not that. They love Christmas.

The problem is that it's hard to coordinate three people's schedules, especially when one of them is an ER doctor and likely to be called in to the hospital on a moment's notice. So they've got a routine: Christmas Eve is for the three of them, and it's for doing all the Christmasy things that everyone else usually spreads throughout the month, and it is sacrosanct.

"Well, boys," Musichetta says, curled up on the couch and grinning at them over the lip of a Santa mug full of hot chocolate with a half-melted candy cane stirrer. "What should we do first?"

" _Snowmen_ ," Joly breathes, wide-eyed with eagerness. And Bossuet jolts so hard in his excitement over the idea that he nearly spills his hot chocolate all over himself, so Musichetta knows it's going to be a unanimous vote.

Bossuet scarcely waits long enough to gulp down his cocoa and put on a proper winter coat and mittens before dashing out the door into the front yard. Musichetta follows after him with a thermos of it for when they get chilled, and Joly's the last, minutes later and changed into a heavy coat, sweater, thrummed mittens and snow pants that swish with every step.

Bossuet's already working on building up the first big ball of snow for the snowman's base while Musichetta stomps around the yard and collects things they might need for the decorating -- branches, pinecones, small stones that might suit for buttons or eyes.

Somehow, when the snowman is still only half-finished, snowballs start flying. The first one Musichetta sees hits Bossuet square in the chest and has him yelping and cartwheeling his arms to keep upright. His eyes narrow as he looks between Joly and Musichetta, trying to decide who the traitor is.

"Not me!" Musichetta says and ducks behind a tree.

"Tattletale!" Joly cries at her as Bossuet starts running for him, snow flying up around both of them, and it doesn't end until Bossuet's got Joly on his back, shrieking and calling for help as Bossuet shoves handfuls of snow down the back of his coat.

Musichetta ends it by sneaking up on both of them while they're distracted and nailing them both with perfectly-formed snowballs that explode upon impact and leave both of the boys with their jaws dropped, blinking at her. "All right," she says, hands on her knees as she grins down at both of them and offers each a hand to help them get back up to their feet. "Come on, we can't have a naked snowman on our front lawn. Think of the children."

"Oh man," Joly says, sprawled on his back even though Bossuet has climbed off of him, taking the opportunity to make a snow angel in their front yard. "Can we, though? We can put fig leaves on them. It would be _hysterical._ "

"This isn't really the climate for figs, I don't think."

"Maple leaves, then."

"But then we won't have the fun of playing dress-up," Musichetta reminds him, and pulls him to his feet.

By the time they've got the snowman built and ready for decorating, Bossuet's pants are soaked through up to the knee and she's pretty sure his boots and socks are no better. He's shivering slightly but trying to hide it, until Musichetta leaves off from the construction to go retrieve the thermos, comes back and presses in into his hands. "Hypothermia is _not_ Christmasy," she says firmly, and makes sure he drinks.

"You should've changed into proper pants," Joly says, coming over to join them. "Like me."

"I haven't worn snow pants since I was in the first grade," Bossuet protests, gulping down the steaming cocoa.

"And when's the last time you played in the snow without ending up wet and shivering?"

"First grade," Bossuet grumbles, and sticks his tongue out at Joly.

Musichetta darts in and kisses him on the corner of the mouth, and all the faux-grumpiness melts away. "Let's finish this," she says. "And then we can go inside and warm you up."

Bossuet snaps a branch almost in half, so only the bark is keeping the two pieces connected, and uses it to make it look like their snowman is standing with a hand on his hips. Joly positions the other stretched upward like it's waving, and Musichetta fiddles with the face until it's got a proper expression going on. 

Then it's time to dress him up, and they all go stomping back into the house to raid their closet, and come back out laden down with their arms full of clothes.

They dress him in one of Bossuet's garish Hawaiian shirts and a flouncy skirt taken from Musichetta's third of the closet. Joly adds sunglasses and one of Musichetta's floppy beach hats, and they all stop long enough to take pictures with their cell phones before stripping the snowman bare and doing all over again, and again. 

It's Joly who pulls out the fuschia feather boa kept from a long-ago Halloween costume, and Musichetta and Bossuet both gasp, " _Yes,_ simultaneously, and help him drape it around the snowman's neck and up his outstretched arm.

At some point during the decorating, Joly ends up giving Bossuet a piggy-back ride, carting him around the yard with his legs wrapped around his waist so that Bossuet can his feet get out of the snow. Joly carries him around and Bossuet does his best to help Musichetta dress the snowman, laughing hysterically every time he nearly falls off of Joly's back or tips them both over into a drift of snow.

There is a brief, ferocious debate over which hat to use. Joly carries Bossuet over to a top hat, but Bossuet refuses to pick it up. "It's _cliche_ ," he says, one arm hooked over Joly's shoulder. "We can do better than that!"

"Our snowman is wearing a feather boa and a skirt," Musichetta points out. "It can hardly be said to be cliche."

Joly's tassled hat with fuzzy earflaps is a brief contender before they settle on a complicated fascinator that Musichetta bought just-because a few years back. A choice selection from their collection of ugly christmas sweaters completes the look, and they all take more pictures before Bossuet's teeth start chattering in earnest and they herd him back inside.

"Dry clothes, now," Musichetta says as she puts the kettle on. "Knowing you, you'll catch the plague and we'll all have to spend Christmas in the hospital."

"I'll make sure you get assigned to all the mean nurses," Joly threatens, and the sounds of Bossuet throwing open drawers looking for clean clothes takes on a new, urgent note, even though they all know that it's an empty threat.

Musichetta makes peppermint tea while Bossuet changes, and Joly lights a fire and turns the Christmas music on, and they spend a good hour piled onto the couch together, a tangle of limbs and blankets and stealing sips from whoever's mug of tea happens to be closest. They steal kisses, too, and Bossuet sings along off-key once his teeth have stopped chattering enough to let him. Joly joins in half a song later with a lovely baritone, and Musichetta hums along so she can enjoy listening to them.

An hour of tea and snuggling and Christmas carols settles them all and warms them up so that when Joly shifts and stretches, arms and legs reaching out all directions from underneath the blankets and says, "We should get to wrapping, I think," they're all quick to agree and untangle themselves from one another.

One year early on, they all tried to wrap one another's gifts in secrecy, and it mostly resulted in Musichetta trying to do a decent job wrapping presents on their bed and failing utterly, Joly struggling to find enough room to do his wrapping on the kitchen counter, and Bossuet given the dining room table because out of everyone, he's the most likely to inflict grievous bodily harm on himself with a freak paper cut accident and so Musichetta and Joly both unanimously agreed that Bossuet should be given the best workspace. 

After all three of them at various points came home from work only to be greeted by alarmed yelping and exile to the bathroom until presents could be properly wrapped or concealed, they all agreed a change was needed. So now they stow their gifts in nondescript boxes -- or they try to fake one another out by using deceptive boxes, Musichetta once got a lovely cashmere sweater packaged up inside an empty box of Tide detergent, and the boys still cackle about that to this day -- and they all wrap at the dining room table together, and it's a much more enjoyable experience for all.

Despite everyone's attempts to keep his wrapping station ideal and repeated reminders to be careful, Bossuet still is incapable of wrapping a present without giving himself a paper cut, and by the time he's done with all his gifts his hands are covered in at least half a dozen bandaids. Musichetta once bought him a pair of those kevlar gloves intended to protect your fingers while using kitchen knives, but they were thick and bulky and made him clumsy enough that they all feared for the entire household's safety and quickly vetoed that idea. Now he just tolerates the paper cuts and bandages them as they happen and afterwards calls them his Christmas war wounds to anyone who asks.

Joly and Musichetta have tried to convince him to let them wrap his gifts for him, and one year he even agreed, but when Joly tried to tie a ribbon around a gift in a nice bow he got so tangled up in the ribbon that it took both of them ten minutes to figure out how to free him. Joly looked sheepish and Bossuet looked amused and Musichetta had to bend over the table and laugh at them both for five minutes straight. It was the start of a new Christmas tradition for them, and now once the presents are wrapped and under the tree and the table is strewn with snipped off bits of ribbon and unused bows, Musichetta and Bossuet festoon Joly with them, ten colors of bows in his hair and a dozen different kinds of ribbons tied around his wrists and dangling from his pockets until he looks like Christmas personified and sheds ribbons and bows throughout the house. They make a game of picking them up, when they find them, and returning them to Joly in exchange for a kiss, and inevitably by the end of the night Musichetta has a headband made of curling ribbons and Bossuet has bows stuck to the top of his head and they end up fishing them out from between the couch cushions and under the blankets on the bed for weeks to come.

After one very disastrous attempt to cook Christmas Eve dinner together that resulted in two singed eyebrows -- neither of them belonging to the same person -- and a screaming smoke detector, they get takeout for dinner now, and as the day turns to evening and draws toward a close, they turn out all the lights in the house except for the ones wrapped around their Christmas tree, and sit on the couch together with cartons of pad gra pow or tubs of pumpkin curry, Joly's feet on Musichetta's lap or her head on Bossuet's shoulder, quiet and close as they enjoy the warm glow of the tree lights and the satisfaction of a house that is dressed to the nines in Christmas spirit.

In the morning they'll bake cinnamon rolls (pre-made, so no one has to do anything more strenuous than place them on a baking sheet and preheat the oven, because Christmas should be spent with family and not in the kitchen) and open presents and it'll be nice, too. But where everyone else in the world can't wait for Christmas, for them, it's the day before that they look forward to all year.


End file.
